


Queen of Staves

by RiverDelta



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Body Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-29 23:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12095775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverDelta/pseuds/RiverDelta
Summary: Heather just wanted Veronica to be safe.





	Queen of Staves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heatherchandler (heathermylove)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heathermylove/gifts).



**September 1st, 1999**

You never know the kind of power you have until you lose it all. That’s not an easy thing to say, but it’s true. I once ruled over men and women, could destroy a life or two with a few words, could turn truth into lies and lies into truth, I was nothing less than a fucking goddess.

Now, I’m just the local PI.

How times change. My name is Heather Velma Chandler, Private Investigator in the shithole town of Baltimore, Maryland. My business cards say “Heather Chandler: Private Investigator and Magical Problem Solver”, I guess. I used to be the Demon Queen of the fuckin’ universe, I used to dress to the nines, drink myself stupid every night, have more money than God, and get to go wherever I wanted with nothing but a few kind words.

Then I grew up.

Nothing like your mother finding you eating out Chinese to make her reconsider ever loving you. By “eating out Chinese”, I mean of course sticking my tongue into Heather Duke’s vagina. I hate Chinese food. Thinking about it, though, I also kind of hate Heather Duke. Why did we fuck? Like so many stories involving teenage escapades...none of it made any sense.

If you made me guess, I’d have to say that what happened was that I had me, someone beginning to...explore her feminine side, and Duke, someone who, let’s be honest, had always been looking for someone to explore one specific feminine side of hers. So maybe it was natural that we fucked in my mom’s master bedroom.

Well, that was a stupid idea.

She burst in right when I was right inside of the least likable Heather, and, well...I ended up staying with the Sawyers for a while...with the understanding that as of that moment, I was a disgrace to the family legacy who was better off dead. I never said that I had loving parents.

Of course, it’s not like you care about Heather Chandler, the grown 28-year-old woman in a duster straight out of _El Dorado_ and a goddamn hat, the girl who dresses more like that psycho from high school in Sherwood than how she used to dress, who wears greys and grey-blues as much as reds, who can’t afford to wear designer shit.

You care about 18-year-old Heather Chandler, the teenager, the Demon Queen of High School, the Czarina of Westerburg High. You’re here for the girl who was smoking hot every single day, who spent Daddy’s money like it was falling from the sky, who skipped classes, scared, and screwed. You’re here for her.

She’s not dead.

She’s alive. Barely. Really, there’s only one place where the Demon Queen comes back like a ghost from an era long gone. Here. This is a dead room, normally. The office is small, cramped, there’s a window overlooking the projects outside, I’ve got an unloaded handgun on my desk with magazines in the desk drawer.

It’s an antique desk, it came with the office, it looks like something you’d find in a Victorian London doctor’s office. The legs bend a bit and are carved with strange, curving markings. The lights are dead, they’ve been dead for the last few days, no response from the power company.

There’s a military-grade flashlight sitting on the desk, and it’s blasting light into the room, like a miniature sun. The actual sun’s set, so that’s probably for the best. I’m sitting there, in a red throne of a chair, sitting a few feet from the desk and behind the light, skulls, tiny wooden idols, and a myriad of arcane tomes behind me on shelves. Myriad. I can’t believe it took until two years ago for me to learn that word. It seems pretty basic. Myriad.

So I sit there on my throne, knowing that everything in this room is mine, and look across my desk to find my girlfriend, and when I say “mine”, I mean it, Veronica Sawyer. She has her hand on my desk, and looks at me with a cocky expression, as if daring me to stand up. “Is the door locked?”

“Heather, I only forgot to lock the door once, it’s really not a big deal.” Veronica said, laughing a bit, then moving to sit down on the antique desk, her back to me. “Well, we got lucky that time. What if someone tried to break in?”

“Who’d try to break in?” Veronica asked, though I got the sense that she knew some answers to that. Despite that, I decided to make it clear. “Autumn Court separatists looking to take me out for being aligned with the Summer Court and for stopping their demon summonings. Winter Court looking to take me out for my ties to Summer. Summer Court because they’re Fae, so who knows how they even think?

“Maybe a vampiric hit team trying to kill or turn you, or Spring Court going after me for the Lansky thing...Or, hell, maybe giant fucking scorpions. Maybe giant fucking scorpions just hate me and want me dead! Did you ever think of that, Veronica?”

“I notice that all of those scenarios were about you.” Veronica said, sighing a bit. I sighed in return. “Yeah, well, I’m the more supernaturally important of us, Ronnie.” She looked down a bit and spoke. “I guess.” I noticed that her voice kind of trailed off at the end, there. “Are you OK, Ronnie?”

“I mean, I am right now, but how long’s that going to last? It’s not safe to hang around you, Heather! What if one of your many enemies gets me killed, Heather? Then what?” She said, nearly yelling. I rubbed a temple. “Veronica, are you saying you want me to stop? This is pretty much the best living I’ll ever be able to make, and I’m helping people, I’m doing the right thing.”

“No, I know that...I want you to teach me magic.” She said, and I closed my eyes at that. “Ronnie, I can’t just...teach you magic. It took me years to learn, and I had my dad to teach me as a kid. It’s not that simple.”

“Okay, well, is there any way I can be less likely to die? What if something like the Lansky incident happens again, and that whip of thorns hits me and stabs into my chest instead of missing me? What then?” She said. I stood up and paced back and forth a bit, trying to figure out if there was any way to make that work, racking my brain.

“Hey, uh, Heather...What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking, Ronnie, dammit!”

* * *

 

My name is Veronica Sawyer. I’m not going to give you some kind of huge introduction about how I had sex with a girl and that led me on my path to becoming a detective wizard, or something. “Yeah, well, you don’t really think that often, so forgive me for not guessing it.” I teased, sticking my tongue out at her.

Mature, I know.

“Okay, fine, I think I have a solution. It’s just...not a pretty one.” Heather said, and I tilted my head. “Not pretty? You’re not going to do any demonic shit to me, are you? We didn’t sign any girlfriend papers or anything, but if we did, that would be, like, a clause somewhere, banning that.”

“Why are you such a nerd, Veronica?”

“Hey, you read more books than I do these days.” I jabbed. She sighed. “Veronica, we read different kinds of books, honestly. Look, here’s what I’m thinking.” She gesticulated a bit, speaking like she expected me to just kind of go with it. “I can’t teach you to be a wizard, because that would take way longer than I feel like bothering with it.

“Here’s the plan. You can’t just learn magic, but you can cheat. Just like in high school...except the opposite, with you cheating instead of me. Here’s the thing. You know how you can make deals with certain supernatural powers?”

“God dammit, I’m not going to make a deal with a demon!”

“Not a demon, Ronnie. The Summer Court. Also, you already did make a pretty sexy deal with a demon years ago.”  She said, shrugging off her massive coat to show a tight reddish top with a low neckline. “Honestly, Heather, if you were a succubus lying to me the whole time, I probably wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Yeah, yeah, now, do you want Summer Court fae powers or not?”

“What’s the catch?” I asked, as, well, making a deal with completely amoral faeries who have totally different standards than humans and see human beings as either pawns or toys seemed like an incredibly stupid idea to me. “You end up in debt to faeries.” She said, pretty simply.

“...So either be in debt to faeries or hope that I don’t get murdered?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“God dammit, how do we even start this?” I sighed, and she stood up, walking with the natural grace I always kind of wished I had. She moved to stand in front of me, and held out her hand, as if to shake. “Take my hand, and close your eyes.” I took her thin hand and felt its warmth, and let my eyelids fall.

She started to chant, repeating the verse three times. “Noinin mór, Sidhe de na bláthanna is giorra, peitil níos géire ná sneachta, bean de na deilbh shimplí atá dearmadta agus nádúrtha, is mian liom teacht chun ár gcabhair agus beannaigh an leanbh seo le cuid de do chumhacht....Noinin mór, Sidhe de na bláthanna is giorra, peitil níos géire ná sneachta, bean de na deilbh shimplí atá dearmadta agus nádúrtha, is mian liom teacht chun ár gcabhair agus beannaigh an leanbh seo le cuid de do chumhacht....Noinin mór, Sidhe de na bláthanna is giorra, peitil níos géire ná sneachta, bean de na deilbh shimplí atá dearmadta agus nádúrtha, is mian liom teacht chun ár gcabhair agus beannaigh an leanbh seo le cuid de do chumhacht....”

Then, she held me tightly, and I began to see a field of stars, and it felt as though my body had been set on fire.

I looked down. It was. Golden, smokeless flames enveloping my body, charring my clothes and my flesh, exposing muscle, sinew, and bone, only to be replaced with a clear, dewy coating that entombed my wounds - without healing them.

I felt my eyeballs pop and be replaced with magical, amber orbs. I felt wings burst from my back, shredding through flesh, stabbing me, stabbing me, fuck, fuck fuck.

Dragonfly wings. I couldn’t see them, but they were dragonfly wings.

The burning sensation stopped, and I looked down, and suddenly, Heather mattered so little to me anymore. A voice ringing in my head, like the sound of God.

_The Queen of Staves has a body once more._

Heather ran.


End file.
